Tunisia – Page 2

Check out my new ‘Policy Watch’ for the Washington Institute: “The Tunisian Jihadist Movement Ten Years After the Prisoner Amnesty”

Posted on February 19, 2021February 26, 2021 by Aaron Y. Zelin

On February 19, 2011, Tunisia announced a general prisoner amnesty following the overthrow of President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, in the process allowing 1,200 jihadists back onto the streets to organize. These individuals included 300 operatives who had previously fought in Afghanistan, Algeria, Iraq, Somalia, and Yemen.

In the ten years since then, the country’s jihadist movement has morphed through various phases and is now at its greatest lull since the revolution, at least in terms of terrorist attacks. The current situation mirrors the movement’s pre-revolution status in other ways as well, with most of its fighters located on foreign fronts, most of its attack planners based in the West, and members imprisoned in multiple countries. The main difference now is that the number of those involved is much larger. And despite the government’s major accomplishments against jihadists over the past five years, it still faces formidable challenges related to reforming its security sector, judiciary, prison system, and governance problems—any of which could undermine the country’s ability to prevent a resurgence of the acute security threats it met from 2011 to 2016.

Click here to read the rest.

Check out my new article for the ISIS Reader website: “Tunisians of the Iraq Jihad and How That Set the Stage for the Syrian Jihad”

Posted on January 29, 2021February 4, 2021 by Aaron Y. Zelin

Nestled into the ISIS Reader: Milestone Texts of the Islamic State Movement is a brief mention of a Tunisian that went by kunya Abu Usamah al-Tunisi. Based on primary source research for my own book, Your Sons Are At Your Service: Tunisia’s Missionaries of Jihad, Abu Usamah came to Iraq at the latest in early 2004 and fought in the Battles of Fallujah where his close relationship with both Abu Mus’ab al-Zarqawi and Abu Hamzah al-Muhajir led to his rise in the organization: first as the military leader of Baghdad’s southern belt and later as the leader of Majlis Shura al-Mujahidin (MSM)/the Islamic State of Iraq’s (ISI) entire foreign fighter operation. His closeness to al-Zarqawi and al-Muhajir might also help explain why Abu Usamah appeared as one of the masked individuals in the video that showed the beheading of the American Nicholas Berg in May 2004. More importantly, the fact that Tunisians held high-level positions, especially ones related to foreign fighting, helps explain why so many Tunisians would later become connected to these networks that helped recruit people to fight in Iraq, Libya, and Syria after 2011. Abu Usamah would eventually be killed in a U.S. airstrike in the city of Musayyib, in Babil Province, on September 25, 2007, along with a number of other senior ISI leaders.

Although many Tunisians partook in jihadism prior to the Iraq war, the war inspired a new generation and cadre of individuals. For example, Hasan al-Brik, who would become Ansar al-Sharia in Tunisia’s (AST) head of dawa after the 2011 Tunisian revolution, traveled to Iraq in 2003. Like many others, he did not actually make it into Iraq, but rather took charge of a safe house in Syria where individuals were vetted before travelling to Iraq. For the Tunisians who survived, many, including al-Brik, would be arrested in Syria (and elsewhere) and rendered back to Tunisia to be placed into its prison system. Tunisia’s prisons in the seven to eight years before the revolution would be crucial for bringing together the first generation of Tunisian jihadis associated with Afghanistan and Europe-based networks and the second generation more associated with Iraq and the GSPC/AQIM networks. This prison exchange between the first and second generations of Tunisian jihadis would provide AST’s base for activities after the 2011 revolution and later the foreign fighter mobilization to Iraq, Libya, and Syria to either join Ansar al-Sharia in Libya, Jabhat al-Nusrah, or the Islamic State.

My book provides a lot of details on the Tunisians that joined the Iraq jihad, around 5,000 words in all. Due to that length and the focus of the ISIS Reader on primary sources, this post will highlight some details based strictly on research derived on this network from primary sources. However, if you want the entire picture, chapter four of my book gets into the entire history and story in full.

Click here to read the rest of this post.

New statement from al-Qā’idah’s General Command: “Condolences and Remembrance Regarding the Martyrdom of Shaykh Abū ‘Iyādh al-Tūnisī”

Posted on March 30, 2020March 31, 2020 by Aaron Y. Zelin

Click the following link for a safe PDF copy: al-Qā’idah’s General Command — Condolences and Remembrance Regarding the Martyrdom of Shaykh Abū ‘Iyādh al-Tūnisī

______________

Source: RocketChat

To inquire about a translation for this release for a fee email: [email protected]

Check out my new article for the Global Network on Extremism & Technology: “How Ansar al-Sharia in Tunisia’s Message Framing Primed Its Members To Become Recruits For The Islamic State”

Posted on March 19, 2020March 23, 2020 by Aaron Y. Zelin

There are a number of reasons why Tunisians joined the Islamic State in Iraq, Syria, and Libya. One underappreciated aspect of this is the way Ansar al-Sharia in Tunisia’s (AST) messaging primed members of the group and others in society that were exposed to, attended, or followed online AST activities and events. In my new book, Your Sons Are At Your Service: Tunisia’s Missionaries of Jihad, I describe this process, which I will examine in brief here. In particular, I will explore AST’s motivational framing, which “functions as prods to action.” The major themes AST crafted in its narrative was related to brotherhood, the defense of Islam, the creation of an Islamic state, and remaining as an entity.

Click here to read the rest.

Check out my new ‘Policy Watch’ for the Washington Institute: “Tunisia Turns a Corner Against the Jihadist Movement”

Posted on January 30, 2020February 3, 2020 by Aaron Y. Zelin

For the first time since its 2011 revolution, Tunisia is not on the defensive in its battle with the Islamic State and al-Qaeda. Data from 2019, paired with a more holistic approach to combating jihadists, bears out this claim. Specifically, Tunis is expanding its toolkit beyond a purely military or law enforcement approach. Because of these advances, which have developed over the past few years, Tunis and Washington will have widened opportunities to engage on more complex aspects of reform that could make Tunisia a regional and global model. Both internal and external challenges remain, such as from foreign fighters dwelling abroad, an overcrowded prison system, and the threat of resurgent jihadism next door in Libya, but these need not diminish the accomplishments. Moreover, Tunisia can now build on its achievements, continuing the process of reform after decades of authoritarian rule.

SUCCESSES

At the beginning of 2019, according to the United Nations, only eighty jihadist insurgents remained in the mountainous region along the Tunisian border with Algeria—fifty from Katibat Uqba ibn Nafi, al-Qaeda’s Tunisian branch, and thirty from the Islamic State. Over the remainder of 2019, Tunisia’s military further degraded both groups by killing a number of their leaders:

From the Islamic State: Izz al-Din Alawi, Hatim Basduri, Muhammad Basduri, Mundhir Gharsali, Muntasar Ghuzlani, Muhammad Amin Mahkuka, Muhammad Nasir Mubarki, Lakhzar Nasiri, Hossam Thalithi, Ghali Umri
From Katibat Uqba ibn Nafi: al-Bay al-Akruf, Tahar Hijili, Salah al-Din Qasimi, Usama Salmi, Murad al-Shayeb

The year 2019 also saw a decline in attacks, even though the overall numbers appear to show them on par with 2018. Before an improvised explosive device strike in January 2020, no attack had occurred since late October, the lengthiest lull since 2012–2013 (see table below). The arrest figures, which have also fallen, reflect smarter, intelligence-led policing that the Tunisian government began to implement more directly in October 2018. The previous “roundup” style was a holdover from the pre-revolution era.

Click here to read the rest.

The Islamic State’s Bayat Campaign

Posted on November 3, 2019November 29, 2019 by Aaron Y. Zelin

In the aftermath of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s death, I noted that the Islamic State (IS) was likely to start a bayat campaign for its new Caliph Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurashi. Beginning November 2, IS’s official Telegram channels began posting such bayat.

There are two main reasons for this: 1. pledges are leader-specific rather than group-specific and thus need to be renewed with each succession and 2. it is a way to legitimize al-Qurashi’s rule and create a media event so that the group can promote itself as it transitions to a new phase.

The first reason is also something that IS pointed to when it began to overtly feud with al-Qaeda (AQ) in 2013, by saying that following Abu Mus’ab al-Zarqawi’s death, his successor Abu Hamzah al-Muhajir gave baya to the newly created Islamic State of Iraq’s leader Abu ‘Umar al-Baghdadi and even after Abu ‘Umar was killed, when Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi took over in 2010 and then Usamah Bin Laden was killed in 2011, Abu Bakr never publicly gave baya to Ayman al-Zawahiri, even if al-Zawahiri claims he gave it to him privately. Therefore, from the perspective of IS this whole process is not trivial, but important for legitimacy of its leadership and to potentially weed out any insubordination before it manifests into something larger as it already did in the past vis-a-vis AQ.

This post will be updated with the latest official pledges.

November 2, 2019:

Wilāyat Saynā’

al-Binghāl

November 3, 2019:

Wilāyat al-Ṣūmāl

November 4, 2019:

Wilāyat Bākistān

Wilāyat al-Yaman – al-Bayḍā’

November 5, 2019:

Wilāyat al-Shām – Ḥawrān

Wilāyat Khurāsān

November 6, 2019:

Tūnis

November 7, 2019:

Wilāyat Gharb Ifrīqīyyah – Nījīrīā

Wilāyat al-Shām – Ḥimṣ

Wilāyat al-Shām – al-Khayr

Wilāyat al-Shām – al-Raqqah

Wilāyat Sharq Asīā

Wilāyat Wasaṭ Ifrīqīyyah

November 8:

Wilāyat al-Shām – Ḥimṣ

November 9:

Wilāyat Sharq Asīā

Wilāyat Gharb Ifrīqīyyah – Mālī and Būrkīnāfāsū

Wilāyat al-Shām – al-Barakah

November 12, 2019:

Wilāyat al-Shām – Ḥalab

November 14, 2019:

Wilāyat al-‘Irāq – Shamāl Baghdād

November 15, 2019:

Wilāyat Lībīyā

November 16, 2019:

Wilāyat al-‘Irāq – Dijlah

November 17, 2019:

Wilāyat al-‘Irāq – Diyālā‎

November 18, 2019:

Wilāyat al-‘Irāq – Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn

November 19, 2019:

Wilāyat al-‘Irāq – Karkūk

November 22, 2019:

Wilāyat Sharq Asīā – Indūnīsīyā

November 29, 2019:

Adhirbayjān

Tunisia Kills Another Wanted Terrorist and the Growth of Jabal Orbata As An IS Base

Posted on August 4, 2019August 4, 2019 by Aaron Y. Zelin

Tunisia Kills Another Wanted Terrorist and the Growth of Jabal Orbata As An IS Base

Yesterday, Tunisia announced that its National Guard killed two terrorists in Jabal Orbata, which is in Gafsa governorate (see map below). As part of the preventative operation, the National Guard seized two Kalashnikov-type assault rifles, two explosive belts, and a pair of night vision goggles. Today, the government also announced the identities of those they killed.

To read the rest of this post, which includes more details on the operation and Jabal Orbata as a base, click here.